News about reptiles and amphibians. This may be news from herpetologists, organizations, but also from private persons. Everyone is welcome to send me some news about the protection, abusing, mistreatment, discoveries, etc., of these fascinating animals .

zaterdag 28 januari 2012

Muhammad Nur Santosa: Killing cobras to make ends meet

They are scary and deadly. That’s what most people think when they
become aware of the presence of a cobra. The snakes, known as ular
sendok because the skin of their necks spreads like a spoon when they
are about to attack, are indeed highly venomous.
For Muhammad Nur Santosa, 28, however, the poisonous reptiles are part
of his daily life. If any cobras are found lurking in the yard of his
Yogyakarta home, the father hurriedly captures them, for the animals are
his source of income.

Almost every day, Nur Santosa butchers
between 10 and 300 cobras to meet orders. The snakes are used for their
skin, meat, gallbladders and marrow, which are in high demand for their
supposed healing effects.

Muhammad Nur Santosa: JP/Slamet Susanto

“Sometimes I butcher 300 cobras a day
and at other times none. Since November of 2011, I’ve slaughtered nearly
9,000 snakes,” Nur Santosa said. He keeps the reptiles, mostly supplied
by hunters from various parts of Java, in cloth sacks.

Nur
Santosa’s method of butchering snakes is bold and rather dangerous. With
his bare hands, the man pulls cobras out of their sacks one by one,
decapitating them with a pethel (adze). “I just do it carefully,
observing the movement of their heads. I’m not immune to cobra venom,”
he told The Jakarta Post at his slaughterhouse in Sudimoro in
Bangunharjo village, Bantul.

After killing the cobras, Nur
Santosa, with the help of his older brother, Wisnu Susilo, removes the
skin and extracts the gallbladders. Nur’s mother, Sudiyah, removes the
marrow from the bones.

Cobra meat is purchased by restaurants
that serve snake meat like Burger Cobra in Lempuyangan, Yogyakarta, at
prices ranging from Rp 15,000 (US$1.65) to Rp 30,000 per kilogram. The
marrow and gallbladders, believed to have therapeutic effects, are sold
together at Rp 25,000. Some customers even consume them right at Nur
Santosa’s home.
“I eat cobra gallbladders and marrow once a year to make me healthy.
They generate warmth in my body and I don’t catch colds,” said one
customer, Jatmiko.

The fat of the reptiles is fried to produce
cobra oil, which sells at Rp 5,000 for a 25 millliter bottle. The
snakes’ entrails are sold to feed catfish.

According to Nur
Santosa, most of the cobras he butchers are delivered by suppliers in
Boyolali, Central Java. “The Boyolali suppliers travel all over Java to
get the snakes, which are sold to us at Rp 18,000 each,” he said.

Once
a management student at Pembangunan Nasional University in Yogyakarta,
Nur Santosa became a butcher out of necessity. The snakeskin handicraft
business founded by his father, Seger, in 1983 collapsed following the
earthquake in Yogyakarta in 2006. One of their two snake butchers was
killed in the disaster and the other was crippled.

“Since 2006 I
had to take over the profession as none of my family members dared to do
the slaughter work,” said Nur, whose father’s production house and
residence were ravaged by the quake, with the business’ entire capital
lost.

While the business had focused on snakeskin handicrafts,
Nur Santosa shifted to the sale of snake meat, gallbladders and marrow.
“I became too preoccupied with the cobra business to finish my studies.
The important thing is I’ve got a job and cause no harm to other
people,” he added.

Asked if animal lovers ever opposed the cobra
slaughter, Nur Santosa said so far he had not yet experienced any
protests. But, he acknowledged the declining number of cobras caught due
to their shrinking population.

“I’m now butchering less than the
former daily average of 300 to 1,000 snakes,” he said. In his view, the
decreasing number hasn’t resulted from practices like what he is
engaged in because snakes reproduce so quickly that the killing of
snakes for food and medicine could have little impact.

“The cause
of the population decline is the shrinking habitat of snakes. A lot of
farm areas have now been converted into settlements or shopping centers
so that snakes have no more space for proper reproduction,” he pointed
out.

Yet, Nur Santosa is also aware that the killing of cobras
will some day be restricted due to the expanding business of housing
development, which reduces snakes’ habitats.